Although Facebook’s just testing its so-called “shop section,” the move makes sense, given its recent introduction of peer-to-peer payments capabilities, new ways to let stores communicate with people via messages, and its increasing dedication to keeping people within the Facebook ecosystem as much as possible.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has taken a stab at ecommerce.

Back in 2011, Facebook allowed a bunch of different brands like Gamestop, Gap, JC Penney, and Nordstrom to open stores on the site.

Americans are spending more than twice as much time using smartphone apps as they did just three years ago. But we’re spending most of that extra time in a small number of familiar apps, rather than spreading it among a bunch of new ones.

According to research from Nielsen via Statista, American iPhone and Android phone users spent an average of 37 hours and 28 minutes using smartphone apps in the fourth quarter of 2014, more than double the figure of 18 hours and 18 minutes from the last quarter of 2011. But the number of apps used has barely budged, moving from 23.3 to 26.7.

That’s good news for app makers if they can break into the top echelons of popularity, as companies like Google and Facebook have managed to do. But it’s not so good for budding app developers who are hoping that more time on our phones means more time downloading and using new apps.

The retailer’s same-store sales growth has been weakening over the last several years, and Deutsche Bank analysts expect things to only get worse for the department store chain.

Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Trussell on Monday downgraded Macy’s from “buy” to “sell,” saying he has “low confidence that the company can bust out of its same-stores sales rut.”

Sales declines at Michael Kors, one of Macy’s key vendors, were cited as a primary reason for the downgrade.

“We are especially concerned as we see no obvious juggernaut to replace the lost dollars, and we note ongoing challenges at other key vendors as well,” Trussell wrote, specifically naming Coach, Guess, and Ralph Lauren, as additional venders that could cause problems.

Michael Kors’ same-store sales declined 6.7% in North America during its most recent quarter. The company’s shares are down 43% since the beginning of the year and nearly 52% in the last 12 months.

Trussell also cited concerns about declining revenue from tourists, as well as a major shift in discretionary spending from products (like clothing) to experiences and technology.

Macy’s is also suffering from a shift toward direct-to-consumer business models, in which brands use their own websites to sell directly to customers without going through a department! store l ike Macy’s.

At a recent conference, Bloomingdale’s Chairman and CEO Tony Spring said this changing landscape keeps him up at night.

“Our vendors are our partners and suppliers. But many have also become our competitors,” Spring said at the Retail Marketing Society’s “Reinventing the Store” conference in June, according to Trussell.

Jun 11, 2015

Hang around the crowdfunding scene long enough and you'll hear tales of campaigns that were too good to be true, or creators who simply took the money and ran. It's scary stuff, we know — but you'll be glad to hear that the Federal Trade Commission now has your back when the host sites' safeguards aren't enough. The government body has taken its first action against a crowdfunding fraudster, reaching a settlement with Erik Chevalier after he cancelled a Kickstarter board game project and reneged on promised refunds. The culprit won't pay restitution, unfortunately (he's allegedly unable to pay), but he's barred from any deceptive crowdfunding practices and obligated to honor whatever refund policies he sets. A slap on the wrist, then? Maybe, but it's still a shot across the bow of scammers who are only interested in padding their bank accounts.

The iTunes Store was a simple premise: Digital songs cost $0.99 each, and the record companies would get $0.70 from each song sold. You could also buy albums, and the record companies would get 70% of that, too. And thus, Apple managed to dethrone Sony, the biggest name in music players at the time with the Walkman, by offering a tight turnkey solution — a complete music ecosystem — in the iTunes Store and the iPod.

Business Insider/Statista

About a decade later, though, music is just one application on our phones and tablets — andpeople aren’t nearly as willing to pay $0.99 for songs. That involves taking out one’s wallet on too many occasions. And so music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify have proliferated: Apps that emphasize music discovery in a radio-like experience with free and paid tiers, but don’t take up any space on your devices, and offer a flat monthly fee, if any fee at all.​

eMarketer estimates that US programmatic digital display ad spending will leap 48.9% this year to hit $14.88 billion, or 55.0% of total digital display ad spend. While the majority of those dollars will likely focus on direct-response efforts, April 2015 research by Econsultancy in association with Quantcast finds that programmatic branding adoption is relatively high, and spending will rise in the coming years.

Among UK and US senior marketers polled, 62% said their companies ran programmatic advertising campaigns for branding objectives. What was holding back nearly four in 10 non-users from buying in, or existing users from investing further? Data privacy concerns and difficulty proving return on investment were the two most common issues, each cited by 23% of respondents. Lack of quality data (18%), a complex marketplace (17%) and lack of transparency (16%) rounded out the top five.

When asked about the benefits of using programmatic for branding, respondents were most likely to cite increased efficiency, reduced overall advertising costs and the ability to optimize and target the right audience in real time as “major” benefits. Among all benefits included, at least 45% of respondents rated them highly beneficial.

Notes: Global internet consumption grew by almost 84% between 2010 and 2014, driving overall media consumption growth of 5.1%, to 485 minutes per day, according to estimates released by ZenithOptimedia. Exposure to outdoor advertising was the only traditional medium to show an increase during that 5-year period, of 1.2%, with time spent with TV (-6%), print newspapers (-25.6%) and print magazines (-19%) all declining. Nevertheless, TV still dominated global media consumption last year at an average of 183.9 minutes per day, 68% higher than internet consumption (109.5 minutes/day).

TV is expected to still account for more than one-third (34.7%) of global media consumption by 2017, though time spent watching broadcast programs on TV sets is expected to decline by 1.7% per year. By contrast, time spent accessing the internet is predicted to grow by 9.4% per year between 2014 and 2017.

Notes: Premium digital video ad views continue to migrate to devices outside of desktops and laptops, per FreeWheel’s latest quarterly report, with strong growth in particular coming from smartphones, which accounted for 17% of overall views, more than double a year earlier. OTT Devices also demonstrated rapid growth year-over-year, though their 8% share was consistent with the previous quarter.

In other study results:

Authenticated viewing accounted for 57% of long-form and live monetization for programmers (MVPDs) in Q1, more than double the 25% share from a year earlier;

OTT devices continue to represent the second-largest share of authenticated ad views, at 19% in Q1;

Overall video views grew by 40% year-over-year and video ad views by 43%, driven by live and long-form viewing;

Tablets and OTT devices continue to be used primarily for long-form (20+ minutes) and live viewing, with the opposite true for desktops/laptops and smartphones; and

Ad completion rates were almost as high for post-roll (72%) as for pre-roll (73%) videos.

Source: Leichtman Research Group (LRG)
Notes: Although the pay-TV subscriber market continues to be larger than the broadband subscriber market, that gap continues to narrow, per the latest data from LRG. The results indicate that the top broadband providers – representing roughly 94% of the market – added about 1.2 million subscribers in Q1 2015, bringing their total to 88.5 million. Cable companies had a particularly strong quarter, with a net gain of slightly more than 1 million subscribers, their largest net add since Q1 2008.

By comparison, they didn’t fare so well with pay-TV subscribers. Indeed, the top 9 cable companies shed roughly 60,000 video subscribers in Q1, though that wasn’t much worse than in Q1 2014, when they lost around 50,000. Overall, though, the top pay-TV providers (representing about 95% of the market) had a weak first quarter, adding only around 7,000 subscribers overall. That’s despite this being traditionally a strong quarter: last year, these providers added more than 250,000 video subscribers in Q1.

Indeed, the top telephone providers (+140,000) had the fewest net adds since Q4 2006, while the top DBS companies (+52,000) had the fewest of any first quarter since LRG began tracking the pay-TV market.

Ad blocking on mobile has been possible for a while — with services like Adblock Plus and TrustGo allowing users to control the amount of advertising they see on apps and the mobile web. But a new Israeli start-up called Shine claims to have backing from the major wireless carriers, which could seriously threaten the mobile advertising industry.

But for mobile carriers, ads can actually be a hindrance. Roi Carthy, chief marketing officer at Shine, told Business Insider that the standard app or website pings an antenna up to 50 times a minute — it’s called background signaling. Bandwidth is one of the most expensive pieces of infrastructure for a telecommunications company to operate.

It’s expensive for users too: Shine estimates that, depending on your geography, ads are using up 10-15% of user’s data plans (and not to mention sucking up battery life, and making load times slower.)

Shine originally started its life in 2011 as a company devoted to creating mobile anti-virus software. The company has raised $3.3 million in funding to date, has 25 staff, and is based in Israel.

Its investors include Horizons Ventures — which is owned by Li Ka-shing, the billionaire chairman of Hutchinson Whampoa, the huge conglomerate that owns the “3”-branded mobile carrier, which operates across Europe, and also the company that has a stake in carriers in Asia including Hutchinson Asia Telecommunications. It also invested in a number of technology companies Facebook, Spotify, and Siri. Shine is also funded by Initial:Capital, which is an early stage investment firm, where Carthy is managing partner.

It was only recently that Shine pivoted to look at ad blocking

Carthy said: “What we discovered redefined malware, and ad tech. That doesn’t mean it has to be malicious, but [ad tech] behaves like malware. The tech and methodology is the same, [but in the case of advertising] it’s more about targeting.”

And so Shine’s ad blocking technology was built.

The ad blocker — or ad-controlling technology as Carthy sometimes calls it — aims to block ads across all mobile display, apps, and mobile video ads. It won’t siphon out “native” ads on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and BuzzFeed, however as these are an “intrinsic part of the user experience,” Carthy says.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.